Spooky

Hmmm...OK...but in case you didn't know....the RTM version doesn't have a watermark or the text your trying to remove. So...if for some reason you are seeing this text then something is really messed up with your install or you already hacked some files and made some type of text appear. Hmmm...cracked? Circumventing the non-existant desktop text in an RTM version is really iffy

Oh Yeah! Don't ya just love it

Your still using one of the non-RTM versions aren't you. And...your using the Aero theme? Some one in the forum gave information for removing the watermark via some file changes/edits, maybe not what you want though. As you found out, those reg entries don't work for what you want to do.

Seems I just read this in a certain group somewhere Anyway, theres supposed to be a method via the registry - or so i've been told, to change this. I'm trying to run down the entries as they don't normally exist. If I run across something i'll let you know. BTW, those aren't really shortcuts I don't think.

Its great! Ya ought to try it out if you can. Just right click on a drive in drive management and away ya go. i didnt know that one existed at all..

Oh Yeah! I love that one, I like the ability to resize partitions on the fly too.

You said in your original post: "Constructive feedback and criticism is also welcome" So...thats what you got. No one hates tweaking services, but in line with your own post people offered their comments as well. Theres nothing wrong with what you shared, anyone thats willing to share information to help others isn't doing anything wrong. Anything posted on the internet will at some point or another be commented upon in ways the original poster may not have expected. I'm sure someone will put the information you posted to good use. I don't think he's talking about individual client computers. I think he's talking about networks where all systems need to be sync'd together for time. Your machine would have to have a horridly inaccurate clock for it to drift that far off, or it's time to replace the CMOS battery.Even the cheapest quartz watches gain or lose an average of 0.5s per day. Assuming that the skew is always in one direction (highly inconcievable), to lose or gain 5 minutes would take 600 days. In practice the skew reverses direction frequently and never in one direction for more than 600 days, so the CMOS battery would probably need replacement long before the time drifts far enough to become a problem.

You did that patch for XP didn't you. You probably will not see such a patch for Vista. Actually the limit of 10 is not a problem.

How much space is actully left on the hard drive? Is this drive formatted with FAT32 by any chance? Did you repartition and format the drive before starting your clean install? Have you updated your BIOS?

That just means that 26 timed out. Did you have your torrent client set up to do more than 10?

2. If it is an upgrade, how long did it take for the previous OS to start up? "I used before Winxp home edition SP2 and is load 1 to 2 mins" 1 -2 minutes for winXP to load up is not really that long depending on the system but the average was below 1 minute for most systems in the last few years, so 1-2 minutes for XP might begin to point towards a problem that existed before you installed Vista.. 6. If installed on an IDE drive, is this drive an older ATA 33 or 66 drive? "I don't know if ATA 33 or 66 but I install on type "WD 40GB , 4 years old" This might be a problem of sorts. Vista expects mostly things made in the last two years for a lot of things. Its picky about some older hard drives also. Might not be a problem, however, what model WD drive is this? 7. When you finally get into Vista, if you look in device manager, are there any problems noticed there and do all devices have drivers? Are any of the devices listed a 'Unknown' or 'Other'? "all three HDDs are know" All three drives are installed correctly and listed in device manager properly? Or are you trying to say they are listed as 'Unknown' ? 8. Are you installing behind a router or on a network by chance? "is there problem for this if I used router on my network??" Not really a problem in most cases, there were some reports of long boot times of approximately 20 minutes or so with machines behind some routers and it took a long time to procure an IP address from DHCP...just asking, not saying its a problem. 9. Maybe some type of corrupted install...did you try burning another .iso to a DVD at a low speed? Some burners need to burn the .iso at a low speed like 2X or 4X. "I burned with 16X I'll try other copy" yes, by all means try this again at a slower speed. 2. If it is an upgrade, how long did it take for the previous OS to start up? 3. What build are you using? (RTM?) 4. Is this installed on a SATA drive? 6. If installed on an IDE drive, is this drive an older ATA 33 or 66 drive? 7. When you finally get into Vista, if you look in device manager, are there any problems noticed there and do all devices have drivers? Are any of the devices listed a 'Unknown' or 'Other'? 8. Are you installing behind a router or on a network by chance? 9. Maybe some type of corrupted install...did you try burning another .iso to a DVD at a low speed? Some burners need to burn the .iso at a low speed like 2X or 4X.

You could try the the information in the attached also...it might provide you some information. Forgot where I got this but thanks goes to them. It does look like a draft however, but the basic procedure works and i've done it my self. create_a_custom_Vista_CD.rtf

I'm using the new NOD 32 with Vista, works great and doesn't hog resources either. But...this looks interesting also.

4 - 5 minutes to load (sometimes 30 minutes) and a 512 MB dump file! ??? Wow! ....and....I think I can say that I don't think prefetcher is your problem. 1. Is this an upgrade install? (upgraded winXP with Vista? or Win2K with Vista?) 2. If it is an upgrade, how long did it take for the previous OS to start up? 3. What build are you using? (RTM?) 4. Is this installed on a SATA drive? 5. If installed on SATA is the install drive part of a RAID configuration? 6. If installed on an IDE drive, is this drive an older ATA 33 or 66 drive? 7. When you finally get into Vista, if you look in device manager, are there any problems noticed there and do all devices have drivers? Are any of the devices listed a 'Unknown' or 'Other'? 8. Are you installing behind a router or on a network by chance? 9. Maybe some type of corrupted install...did you try burning another .iso to a DVD at a low speed? Some burners need to burn the .iso at a low speed like 2X or 4X.

This is more of a survival and money saving tip then a tweak or normal tip, and might answer a few questions for people. It involves making an image of your Vista install. There are many image software products on the market and you can use one of those to do this, there are probably a bunch of ways to image your OS install. I personally use Acronis 10 which works well with Vista. However, if you want to not spend any money you can get excellent basic imaging capabilitites with a windows PE 2.0 boot CD, and its free! Heres what you do: (you need a second hard drive to save the resulting image to) 1. Download the Windows Automated Install Kit (WAIK) from microsoft. Burn the downloaded image file to a DVD. The downloaded image files will have an .img extension so if you don't have anything that can burn a .img file then rename the extension to .iso and burn it with something that will handle .iso files. There are lots of free burning utilities on the net you can do this with. 2. Next visit this post where I have already posted some simple ready made batch files and instructions for creating your own WinPE 2.0 bootable CD. Following the post information and using the batch files, after you have installed the WAIK, it takes about 5 minutes to produce your WinPE CD. The post is located at: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?act=ST...=83722&st=0 3. After creating your WinPE 2.0 CD, put it in your CD drive and boot from it. 4. After booting on your WinPE 2.0 CD and when at the command prompt type ImageX/? for all the commands you will need to create your own backup image of the Vista install you spent hours on getting set up properly. For example, If I wanted to capture an image of my Vista install on the C:\ drive the basic command in the WinPE 2.0 command prompt would look like this: imagex /capture c: d:\imaging\vistainst.wim "Drive C" This command tells imagex to create an image of my C:\ drive, write and save that image on my D:\ drive in the imaging folder and name this image vistainst.wim and further give a little text description ("Drive C") of what the image is for, most of the times I do a time and date for the image here. If you need to restore the image in the WinPE 2.0 command prompt type "imagex /Apply /?" for more information. Many people don't realize this option exists, so if this posted tip helps even one person its worth it.

"480 to 330" Considering that with all of the default services running they only take up, at the most, 50 MB or less of memory. Where did the other 100 MB go? I've followed the guide myself, and my computer run so much better. I decreased RAM usage from about 480 to 330 after fresh startup. And that's noticeable. That's only from disabling services btw. Yikes. Against any tweaking at all? Well. ALOT of the services in Vista and XP aren't even used by us mortals, so why should they be enabled per default? I don't want to waste resources on stuff I don't use and never will. And that's pretty understandable, isn't it? Tweaking services is the same as overclocking. There's a risk, but it's worth the performance gain.

My own personal views, opinions, and experiences with, some of these are: Diagnostic Policy Service (part of the performance tuning foundation for Vista don't disable but you can set to manual) Base Filtering Engine (not just for the firewall, it doesn't hurt to have it enabled. If you want to disable the firewall then do it in the GUI. Actually, once you get the hang of the Vista firewall its pretty neat and useful - its just hard to configure until you get used to it.) IKE and AuthIP IPSec Keying Modules (disabling these doesn't do squat for improving network performance and decreasing RAM usage - another windows urban myth is born. However, if your on systems that use these things they are necessary. If your not on systems that use them they don't do anything at all and there is no impact on performance) Human Interface Device Access (don't disable if you dont use accessability features. It doesn;t imapct anything at all if you haven;t set up any accessability features.) IP Helper (disable IPv6 in the connection if you need to but don't disable this service) Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service (if you disable this, parts of browsers and mail clients may not work correctly) ReadyBoost (no need to disable, does not impact performance and only works if you have the right device to use eg...USB key. Set to manual instead) SL UI Notification Service (i'd leave this set to automatic. Aside from the visible activation there is also the not so visible validation requirements) Tablet PC Input Service (yeah, if you don't have a tablet PC then disable, but if you want to use some of the tablet PC stuff on your PC like the snipping tool for example then don't disable) UPnP Device Host (yep, disable. However, if your going to use MCE then this might need to work.) Volume Shadow Copy (I wouldn't disable it) Virtual Disk (personally, i'd leave it to automatic, it does more than just interface with the management console, but it also doesn't hurt to have it set to manual) Application Experience (not just for themes but it sure seems like it - doesn't hurt to have automatic) Desktop Window Manager Session Manager (not just for themes but it sure seems like it - doesn't hurt to have automatic) Personally though, all together, I wouldn't disable any service at all. They are there for a reason, and should be left alone. If they are causing such a big impact on your computers performance then there are probably areas of your computer you should tune up or beef up in some way like adding memory for example which will be of more benefit then disabling a service to compensate for the very little these services occupy.

"SATA Hard drive: you see, the os WILL boot up after A LONG wait. So I'm wondering if its the fact that Im running it off of a SATA hd and if so is it the hard drive that needs the drivers (as iI can see it already during install) Or is it the.." This usually indicates its looking for something, like drivers maybe for a device - maybe for your display device. Did you re-install with just the defaults and not adding anything in like third party drivers? Its possible i guess it could be the SATA drivers its looking for. Did you choose to load drivers during the install of Vista and point it to the correct SATA drivers? It could be some sort of hardware problem also but for some reason, and its confusing from what you posted so its real hard to tell, I still want to think drivers.

Drive letters are kept, they just aren't in the order you expect after you install Vista on a second drive in your computer. If you already have XP installed on one drive, and then install Vista on another drive, Vista does what the industry standard expects and this is that the first Boot drive in the computer is C:\. This means that what ever OS you boot into its drive will be drive C:\. This is normal expected behavior, its not a problem, its how things work. The fact that your applications were installed in XP, and then you installed Vista, doesn't mean your apps installed in XP will continue to operate in Vista. You need to install those apps again in Vista so the registry entries will be created and all the other associated stuff for Vista will be satisfied just like they were when you installed them in XP. Why on earth would you expect your apps installed in another OS (XP) to work on a completly different OS (Vista)? Now on the other hand, if you had done an upgrade (upgraded XP to Vista) your apps might still work. If you installed Vista in the same drive partition as XP in a different directory some way or another then your XP is hosed and the apps you had installed in XP wouldn't be expected to work. this is expected behavior for all your apps, since all these applications were installed under XP, why would you expect them to work in Vista? there is no registry information telling vista how to load the programs let alone where the applications reside. if you were to boot back in to XP, your XP drive will be C: again. Then all your apps will work in XP. if you want your apps to work in vista you have 2 options 1. reinstall them on your vista Partition 2. Upgrade your XP partiton to Vista, i did this with my XP install and 98% of my apps came back working the upgrade proccess has radically been changed, if you still don't trust it though, reinstall all your apps in you Vista partition. As far as I'm concerned, the problem remains : why aren't drive letters kept. When I browsed my drives for the first time under Vista, I really 'ed.

Some people don't like the default size and BPP for the icons used in Vista. This is easy to change via a registry entry: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics] "Shell Icon BPP"="50" "Shell Icon Size"="32" These are REG_SZ values, the defaults are shown - change to the values you want. The Shell Icon Size already exists at that location and the default is 32 - the value is in pixels. The Shell Icon BPP does not already exist and needs to be added. The valid values range 50% to 100% - the default is 50. There are also a few more items at that location which can be adjusted concerning icons. As you change the size of the icons of course the spacing between the icons changes also, if you need to adjust the spacing, alter the 'IconSpacing' and 'IconVerticalspacing' REG_SZ values to your liking.

"If you can find SkipAutoActivation in the WAIK I will show my a$$ in the street!" LoL...well...I was going to post again about how to find it and use it because I didn't want you to endure the mental trauma your actions may have caused you. But...I see from the rest of you post you figured it out...glad it worked out for you <SkipAutoActivation>true</SkipAutoActivation> This is not in the WAIK (apart from in the reference guide) so I cannot add it to the answer file with the WAIK. The reference guide does not tell you what other tags this command goes in or anything about it, just tells you the command exists: The term "SkipAutoActivation" does not exist on the internet, so I am completely stuck. Also the WAIK does not account for the fact that no matter which way I do it - I cannot get it to ask where to install, either it is set so it installs automatically to Disk 0 Partition 1 (or wherever you want) OR remove that section (I tried all different combinations but like I said I am not an XML buff) and it does not work, it gives an error. Only an expert in XML could make any sense of that XML file and where things are meant to go, yeah theres the WAIK to do all that for you but certain things don't exist in the WAIK. If you can find SkipAutoActivation in the WAIK I will show my a$$ in the street! EDIT: Eeeesh I found SkipAutoActivation in the WAIK just by pressing Ctrl+F and its there under the licensing thing. Now I got to show my a$$ in the street, sorry for being so dumb, its been a VERY long day today... sorry...

I assume; I think part of the reason that not may have replied to this thread in a while is because there is a seperate Unattended Vista forum at: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showforum=149 I use the WAIK and I do un-attended installs all the time with Vista, have been doing them through the beta and more recently with the RTM. I find that about 99% of my questions are answered by simply reading the help with the WAIK very carefully. I also get answers from the MS web sites for deployment. "I like my monitor screen the way it is thanks" Huh? doesn't do anything weird to mine. What are you talking about?

yeah, I used the winXP drivers also for a while. lately i've been just using the in-box Vista drievrs. But I have installed the realtek release Vista drivers and they actually work very well.

are you sure you didn't do an upgrade to XP? If you installed Vista on its own drive in a clean partition and you had XP on the original C:\ drive it should have automatically set up a dual boot and shouldn't have touched anything on your XP drive.

"11 gig unallocated space" Personally, i'd use the disk management feature in Vista to resize the partition to encompass the 11 GB. With Vista you can re-size partitions. "The second WD hard drive does not show in Vista" This is an IDE drive...right? If so, partition the drive from drive management then format it,,,,that is if there isn't anything on it you need. Sometimes Vista is really picky and will not show a drive in explorer if its not partitioned - it should show in drive management. If it doesn't show in drive management, then you will need to partition it with a utility or something on boot.